The children have continued to investigate forces at work in their physical environment this week, with the aid of magnets of all shapes and sizes! They were challenged to extract colourful metal coins from amongst non-magnetic materials like rice and sand. While doing so, they discovered that they could transfer the treasures between each other and find out which magnets were more powerful. All this pushing and pulling practice came in very handy one afternoon when, inspired by the story of The Enormous Turnip, the kids were challenged to pull some buried root vegetables from the soil, using their strength and determination to do so! After this, they were rewarded for their efforts by receiving the opportunity to chop the veg with child-friendly knives, and use the pieces in their mud kitchen concoctions, before putting them into the compost bin at the end of the day. They also left a few scraps for Meg and Mog, the resident magpies and the growing family of friendly squirrels who jump and scurry from tree to tree outside the rainbow ribbons!
We practiced our counting in as many ways as we could this week. We noticed for example, that there are twelve beautiful blooming daffodils in the clearing just behind the camp. Our Little Forest Folk-ers also used brightly coloured cones and balls to match and count, playing independently and creating their own games together with rules and procedures. While on an adventure walk one morning, which took us to the forest past the spring, we discovered a fairy garden at the base of a tree, made up of pinecones, sticks and leaves. A group of children were so enchanted by this that they created their own fairy camp within our own camp, making shapes with four, five and more sides by using pieces of bark and twigs and counting them out as they created the shapes.
We expect our forest friends to hurtle into the weekend with as much force as they have been experimenting with this week and to count the days until they are back in the forest with us next week - we certainly will be! Have a wonderful weekend, families and friends!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon Village